NCPERS News Clips

December 28, 2010

News Clips for December 28th, 2010

• Alabama Town's Failed Pension Is a Warning
  This struggling small city on the outskirts of Mobile was warned for years that if it did nothing, its pension fund would run out of money by 2009. Right on schedule, its fund ran dry.
• For Maryland taxpayers and state workers, pension tension
  Time may be running out for Maryland's cash-strapped state pension plans. Having spent most of the past 10 years under-contributing to the plans that cover more than 100,000 former employees, the state faces unfunded pension liabilities of more than $18 billion over 25 years and unfunded health-care obligations projected at $15 billion.
• State Budgets: Day of Reckoning
  Steve Kroft reports on the precarious financial conditions many states are facing and what they're doing about it.
• Heightening of pension tension
  The nation's menu of crises caused by governmental malpractice may soon include states coming to Congress as mendicants, seeking relief from the consequences of their choices. Congress should forestall this by passing a bill with a bland title but explosive potential.
• Pension reforms likely to have unintended, and unpleasant, consequences, study finds
  In March, the General Assembly and Gov. Pat Quinn saved Illinois an estimated $220 billion in pension costs over the next 25 years by passing sweeping pension-benefit reductions for future public employees whose retirements are state-funded.
• Gov. Bob McDonnell flip-flops on state employees pension contributions
  On his way to the Executive Mansion, Bob McDonnell emphatically pledged not to reduce the state's level of contribution to the retirement benefits of state employees.